On Jan. 17 I picked up The Northern Star and read that Louis Farrakhan is coming to campus, and I was struck by a note of hypocrisy.

Even as Farrakhan is welcomed, a petition is being circulated to ban the Thunderbolt from Founder’s Library. I asked myself if this is a step toward empowerment or liberal censorship. Doesn’t empowerment come through education? And isn’t education predicated on choice?

But as racism and other issues fall into extremist hands claiming to offer freedom and empowerment, we are faced with the real danger of indoctrination as opposed to education.

Let me encourage everyone to read the Thunderbolt, for I have great faith they will find it racist trash or, at the very most, have the chance of deciding that for themselves. One headline reads “King: Whoremonger!”

Unfortunately, Farrakhan is not also stored in the library. From a radio address, March, 1984:

“The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a…wickedly great man. He rose Germany up from nothing. Well, in a sense you could say there’s similarity in that we are rising our people up from nothing…What have I done? Who have I killed? You’re putting yourself in dangerous…shoes. You have been the killer of all the prophets. Now, if you seek my life, you only show that you are no better than your fathers.”

Whoremonger. Christkillers. Racism has many faces, and “empowerment” at the expense of other groups is questionable. It is not my intention to equate Farrakhan with the Thunderbolt.

Then again, I think of the author Alice Walker, perhaps best known for her novel The Color Purple. “I think he (Farrakhan) is a bigot and an anti-semite. And I think you must condemn people like that.”

Perhaps this letter reads like walking in a minefield, but in that moment before we are all flashblind with cries of racism and reverse discrimination, we must recognize that we walk on a field of potential change. Here is no Panama, no South Africa, and the freedoms we enjoy are under enough seige as it is.

The university is our stronghold. Education and not censorship will better outline the problems of race, and that’s a game of choices.

Lastly, if attempts to remove the Thunderbolt center on a question of funds misspent, then I doubt NIU has spent $13,000 on the Thunderbolt. Could you imagine a petition against Farrakhan? I hope not.

Juan Nunez

Senior

History